Election Target: The 40-Somethings

DUP candidate Moon Jae-in, with soldiers at an army training center in Nonsan last week, in a photo-op building up his defense credentials.

The polls are clear: all the power in the upcoming Dec. 19 presidential election lies with South Koreans in their 40s.

It doesn’t take a political scientist to understand that the South Korean electorate is largely divided on age lines, with young adults supporting left-leaning or progressive candidates and older adults and senior citizens supporting right-leaning or conservative candidates.

With just 76 days until the election, what is most striking about polling data is that the races are closest with South Koreans in their 40s. Also noteworthy are that 40-year-olds make up the largest percentage – 21.9% — of the age groups that South Korean pollsters regularly use, which are 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s-plus.

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A survey for Kyunghyang Shinmun, taken earlier this week by the Asan Institute and Research & Research firms, found that 40-somethings are still leaning toward the progressive candidates, Moon Jae-in of the Democratic United Party and independent Ahn Cheol-soo, though by smaller margins than younger voters. Voters who are 50 and older strongly favor conservative Park Geun-hye.

The power of the 40-somethings lies in a secondary finding of the newspaper’s survey. It asked respondents who they would support in a race between Messrs. Moon and Ahn. Mr. Ahn finished just ahead of Mr. Moon, 38.6% to 37.2%, when all the respondents were counted.

Broken down by age, the newspaper found that younger voters tilted to Mr. Ahn while those who were 50 and older strongly favored Mr. Moon.

Someone somewhere in Seoul’s media-political-consultant world is no doubt trying to come up with a cute name for this middle-aged might, like the Powerful Paunchy or the Awesome Ads, short for adjumma and adjossi.